But I liked Carell in the teaser, performing two very well-done silent gags definitely in the vein of the series: First, Maxwell Smart getting stuck in the phone booth elevator (Carell does a beautiful slow burn here) and then Smart stealthily peering through a beaded curtain, which then loses half of its beads in a loud, clattering mess. Another moment of perfect timing goes here as Carell freezes in place, glancing about nervously while the beads fall. One perfect pause later, he turns to go back, causing one final strand of beads to let loose. The slapstick was very much in the vein of the series, so I thought that was good. Carell also does a perfect Don Adams deadpan, so I have no lack of faith in him. However, the strength of the adaptation lies in the lead, the co-stars and the story, so we'll see how that goes.
The pilot of episode of the Get Smart series (filmed in black and white, by the way, very interesting) surprised me by the fact that it established so many of the show's famous running gags: Max's shoe phone, the Cone of Silence, Smart's catchphrases "Would you believe..." as well as "...and loving it!" (the latter being a true Mel Brooks line if ever there was one.) Normally I'd associate such favorites as part of a series' evolution, but no, there they were, right from the start. That intrigued me but it also worried me, because I figure that if the most well-known elements of the show were in it to begin with, boy howdy must they have been milked over several seasons.
Even so, the comedy was good and Barbara Feldon quite fetching and Don Adams is still one of the best secret agents ever, even topping Woody "I have a very low threshold of death" Allen in Casino Royale.
